


Compromised

by EllyAvon



Series: Love is Not a Game (Or: The Tennis Metaphor Has Consequences) [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Get Together, Hotels, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Potential Dub-Con, Protective Phil Coulson, Tennis metaphor for the win, Undercover, maybe coercion, sort of prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 03:54:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllyAvon/pseuds/EllyAvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's first Under (the) Cover(s) Op doesn't go quite the way he planned.</p><p>It goes about exactly the way Coulson figured it would-- a successful disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compromised

**Author's Note:**

> I gave this a non/dub-con tag because there is some element of coercion to the sex here. As always, Clint's kind of a mess, and he's handling the trauma mentioned in more detail in "He Will Eventually." There is mention of sex-related injury. Please proceed with your own safety and limits in mind, and feel free to ask me if you have any questions.
> 
> I don't have a beta reader, so please let me know if you notice a typo or a spelling error.

He's been at SHIELD five years and is on the edge of gaining a security level when he gets called in for his first under (the) cover(s) mission.

He’s a sniper first, a spy second. There aren’t a lot of sex missions that need his exact set of skills, or rather, _parts._ Most targets are men, most men prefer women, even the men that prefer men don’t usually want someone as masculine as Clint. Also, Clint’s not always available. He the best sniper they have, now, and his missions come pretty steady. He's of much more use on a rooftop than in a bed.

“You know you don’t have to take these assignments,” Coulson says, in French. They’re in Coulson’s new office, making the plans for him to get in close with a French military officer who they suspect is moving weapons into Syria and making ridiculous money doing so.

“Yup, Agent Nguyen told me. Mission’s a mission, sir,” he responds easily, proud his French isn’t rusty. He was just in Monaco for ten days, it shouldn't be. He’s tracing his pencil over the ducts and ventilation of the ritzy hotel he’s going to attempt to get laid in. He feels lucky it’s a new hotel and it actually has ventilation space enough for him to move around in. Those old European buildings just do not have awesome hiding spots like their AC-obsessed american counterparts.

“I just want to make sure you aren’t feeling coerced. There are no consequences for turning down an operation involving potential sexual contact with a mark.”

“I know, I don’t even have to have sex with them. I just do whatever I have to do to get the intel.” He traces a route that’ll bring him up to the roof in hopefully less than five minutes, if he needs an extraction. He flips through his packet to look at the satellite image of the roof. Clint looks at lots of satellite images of rooftops, and this one has two exits and a big space in the middle. He likes it.

“No,” Coulson says.

“No? Sir, this path’ll get me up there and there’s even a space for a chopp--”

“No, not _whatever you have to do._ SHIELD doesn’t run a prostitution ring or a hit squad. You still get to set your own boundaries for certain things, you know that, right?”

Clint resists the urge to roll his eyes, and parrots, “Interrogation techniques of all kinds are at agents’ discretion.” It’s true. They’ll teach him, clinically, in a class with worksheets and a whiteboard, how to take off a fingernail, how to skin a human, where to put T-pins so that it hurts the most. They’ll teach him, yes, but they won’t make him do it. Something something PTSD, Clint figures. He hasn’t found torture to be necessary to do what he does, and honestly, there are enough agents who are weirdly proud and capable of executing heinous and terrifying interrogations that no one asks Clint to develop that skill set.

SHIELD doesn’t make him give blowjobs the same way they don’t make him break the ribs of someone tied to a chair. Clint’s not really sure they’re the same thing, but that’s fine. Clint ends lots of his ops by putting a single bullet between someone's eyes. He's the guy they call when they already have answers. Not a lot of answers forthcoming after someone meanders into Agent Barton's sights. He also sends out a lot of subdermal trackers, tranqs and explosives.

“You’ve never turned down or botched an op. I want you to know that you shouldn’t compromise yourself just to finish an operation.” Coulson says, and Clint tells himself he’s imagining a thinness in it; a tension that isn’t usually there in his voice.

“Sir, I don’t think I know what you mean by compromised.” Clint switches back to English, because even as he’s quite conversational in five languages, and arguably French is one of his best, this has gotten into semantics. He’s not prepared to do semantics _en francais._ He’s also getting the distinct impression this conversation isn’t going the way Coulson thought it was going to go. He’s seen Coulson agitated many times in the last five years, but this is a little different.

“Some people find being coerced-- feeling like they don’t have a choice--” Coulson automatically defines the vocabulary word out of sheer force of habit, even though Clint knows what coercion is, "to do sexual acts very upsetting, traumatizing, even. Most people do, actually.”

Clint is glad they’re having this conversation now and not five years ago. Five years ago his face might have twitched, his ears might have burned. The memory of the Swordsman’s breath on his throat and hands on his hips and-- well, those memories, might have made him give something away.

Instead, he puts on his most placid, professional face.

"Do you think I've been coerced into taking this mission, sir?"

"I think you're up for a promotion, and I'm fully aware that you've never turned down an assignment. My supposition is you don't feel like now would be an acceptable time to opt out. I also know they chose you, asked for you specifically, and that can be difficult to refuse. So, yes, that's enough for me to worry you feel you can't say no."

"After all these years, do you think anyone in the world can make me do something I don't want to do, sir?" He asks with a smirk and a subtle flex of his biceps.

Clint is pretty sure the room gets ten degrees colder as Coulson stares him down, "Yes,” he says with icy seriousness, “and I think that person is you."

There’s a thick beat of pause, where Clint ponders what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. But thinking too hard about his stalwart (and favorite) handler has never been a good idea, so he resorts back to stubbornness and flippancy.

“It’s undoubtedly the best way to get this information short of drugging, kidnapping, and torturing a military officer. I got assigned the mission. I was offered an out, I didn’t take it, because I honestly don’t care one way or the other.”

“Is that true?” Coulson presses.

“Sir, I’m getting a little turned around here, I don’t know what you’re asking or why you think I can’t handle this. Sex is sex. It’s a thing people do with each other. It’s like tennis.” Okay, it does sound weirder out loud than it ever has in his head. Judging by the look on Coulson's face, it's really not as smart as it has seemed over the years. But, because he is who he is and someone making a face at him has never stopped him from doing anything stupid, he continues, “It’s a game you play with a partner. Foosball, Mario Kart, sparring. Sex is the same. Just naked and with the risk of catching a disease. I’m not shy about my body and I know how condoms work.” He pauses, and tacks on, “sir.”

And Coulson looks _sad._ Clint’s seen him look sad before. They’ve seen trafficked kids and refugees and know exactly how horrible the aftermath of a massacre is. Yeah, they see some shit out in the field and Coulson isn’t a monster, those things make him look sad. “Just a game,” he repeats back to Clint, quietly.

Why he looks sad because Clint tells him about the tennis theory is a mystery. Well, kind of, but again, thinking too hard about the whole Coulson thing is going to make things complicated. It’s kind of like he has almost all of the pieces of a puzzle-- he could make a coherent picture and figure it all out if he wanted to, but he hasn’t been brave enough.

“A game,” Clint says firmly, shoving a whole plethora of confusing feelings into his SPORTS corner, “like tennis, sir.”

Then Coulson asks, because of course he does, “Why tennis?”

Now Clint can’t help the blood from rising up into his face. There's not really a simple answer and he clamps down desperately on the desire to blurt out something ridiculous, like,  _Love means you lose._ He doesn't say it. But, because he’s never been able to resist Coulson’s questioning, he says,

"I'd rather not say, sir." He’s compulsively honest with him and it doesn’t usually suck anywhere near this much; he usually doesn’t ask him such difficult questions. Russian colloquialisms? Sure. Complicated ricochet calculations? Of course. Personal questions about sex? No. Maybe if he’d done it in the past, Clint would have had some time to build up a tolerance.

"Understood," Coulson says, showing both of his palms in an "I give up" gesture and ducking his head. Clint has seen it before, and usually it means _enjoy having that blow up in your face,_ or something like it. It gives him a nasty feeling in his stomach-- Coulson is hardly ever wrong. Then again, Coulson is always there when things do blow up, too, so there’s that.

They plan the rest of the op as though none of that awkward conversation ever happened.

Commandant Pointeax is a tall, attractive man with a salt and pepper hair and cruel mouth. Clint thinks he looks like a super villain; he's too handsome and powerful to be a nice guy. He has a penchant for picking up young, pretty men with lots of muscles. With just a small amount of eye makeup and a few well-placed semi-permanent faux eyelashes, Clint fits that bill flawlessly. It doesn't take a lot to strike up a conversation with him, even less to get up to his hotel room, and less still to get them both out of their clothes.

Clint does not have to have sex with this man, technically. He could meet up with him every night at the bar, take him golfing every Wednesday for the next six weeks-- but none of those will breed immediate intimacy. Every day that goes by more bombs go off somewhere they shouldn’t. So, in for a penny, in for a whole shitton of money, he guesses.

The commandant-- Luc-- is in Paris for the week, and he keeps Clint up in his room while he goes to meet contacts in the bar downstairs (notably, Agents Ericksson and Singh, but the Commandant doesn’t have to know that). He seems to fully believe Clint is a prostitute of some kind, which, to be fair, is what he implied. It isn't exactly what his cover was supposed to be, but he's comfortable enough to roll with being a kept man for the week. It's kind of Pretty Woman-y, he thinks, though he doubts he'll get a new wardrobe.

He’s only got his tiny hearing aid for a comm-- the only voice he hears those four days besides Luc’s is Coulson’s. He has no way to talk back, knowing that both SHIELD and the Commandant have the room bugged. SHIELD does not have a camera, or so he has been told, but the Commandant does; Clint can’t be seen or heard talking to himself. He’s fairly certain right away, based on the camera placement and where Luc has positioned himself during their first-- engagement-- that he’s not suspicious of Clint, he’s making a sex tape mostly featuring himself.

The older man is interesting, he’s witty and well-spoken and they switch between English and French fluidly, floating flirtatious jibes and double entendres. He’s fun, but he has a mean sense of humor. Clint doesn’t know a lot about psychology, but the combination of heartless jokes and illegal arms dealing makes him think the guy’s a little sociopathic. Clint, for his part, asks just the right questions, plays himself as curious, gold-digging, a bit of an adrenaline/danger junkie. Two of those three are an easy play for him and the other one just means lighting up with delight when he’s offered champagne and caviar, and purring when the Commandant slides an admittedly gorgeous Audemars Piguet watch onto his wrist. Clint immediately decides he will give it to Coulson when this shit is over. He’ll probably like it.

The sex is creative, frequent, and rough. Clint is glad, _so glad,_ that it’s a game. Just a game. It’s a game and for the first time he actively plays to win. While the Commandant is lost in lust, gone to that place everyone else seems to go-- vulnerable, relaxed, open-- Clint is cold, calculating, aware. He has access to his every faculty, and he ruthlessly exploits the other man’s vulnerability. The thought of Coulson (and the other agents, but they're kind of an afterthought) listening over the comms gives him further incentive to keep his shit together. His only allowance for the fact that he’s _in flagrante delicto_ are low growls when things get particularly painful or intense.

Perhaps because of this, Luc calls Clint _mon petit loup_ throughout. As far as pet names go, Clint doesn't mind it, except that he doesn’t want to be “my” anything to anyone.

At around 0230 on Thursday morning, Clint wheedles (he’s going with _wheedles_ because _sucks_ is just undignified, even though this is a game, _all just a game,_ and he shouldn’t care about dignified) the last detail out of him. Then, Coulson’s voice is strong in his ear, “That’s all we needed, take the shot, Agent.”

Even though on his knees with his opponent’s hands already laced through his hair is decidedly not how Clint would choose to start any kind of physical altercation he wants to win, he’s not waiting. He’s done with this. He balls both fists together and slams them hard, up, up, into Luc’s diaphragm. Luc takes a flailing swipe that just glances at his jaw, and yells, _"je t'emmerde, pute!"_

Clint neatly flips off the floor. He ducks smoothly out of a muddled chokehold, dislodges his bow and two very special arrows from their hiding place in the bedframe. Just as the man’s pupils start to recover from their sex-blown dilation, Clint shoots him in the neck with a tranq.

He is fairly certain it’s the shortest hand-to-hand combat he’s ever had with someone with so much training.

Fifteen-Love, Clint wins.

“He’s down, sir. Extraction requested,” he says to the prone and naked body on the floor. He knows his voice sounds mechanical.

He stands stock still, with the second tranq arrow nocked on his bow. It’s always possible, especially for these military types, that they won’t react as strongly as he'd like them to. Clint can over-power Luc if he needs to, but this has always been cleaner, easier, safer. So, Clint does what he does best: he loads his weapon and waits.

In this case, he doesn’t have to wait long. Eriksson and Singh copy, then there’s a double click that demarcates his handler’s private line, “Well done, Agent, excellent work. Stay put for extraction. I'll come for you myself, and we'll get you some sleep.”

It’s only four minutes before the other two agents storm the room and take the limp Commandant in cuffs.

Coulson is there, then, handing him a full quiver of arrows. He doesn’t need it, but it feels so good to be fully armed, if only for the moment. Coulson always knows what he needs. With his quiver on his back, his bow in his hand and Coulson, steady and stalwart, in the room with him, he breathes out for the first time in days.The intense clarity he's honed in his mind to falls away, leaving only a stark, deep emptiness.

 _I’ve been up a long time,_ he thinks blurrily.

Coulson leads him to the hotel room he’s been running the op from this whole week for health check and debrief, as he does after any op where he’s the field handler. For once, Clint doesn’t fight, he just trails behind him down the hall of the hotel, wearing only boxers and his quiver. He slumps into an uncomfortable chair as Coulson gets the med kit and his tablet, shedding the quiver but still gripping his smallest bow.

The command room is cool and dry. All of the computers and surveillance equipment are still set up on the desk and the bureau. Clint realizes his room had been kept warm; he's been mostly or entirely naked for days. He must reek of sex, he muses vaguely as he watches goosebumps rise on his bare arms.

Coulson gently pries the bow from his grip and sets it on the floor in plain sight, then sets to work on the med check. Clint has layered contusions on his wrists and hips, and another small one blooming on his jaw from the brief struggle. He’s got a deep bite mark on his shoulder, and a tiny weal on his arm that’ll be gone by morning from shooting without his guard. Coulson shines a flashlight in his mouth and frowns deeply at the fact that it appears the back of Clint’s throat is bruised, and he has small lacerations on his inner lips where his teeth rubbed. He’s perfunctory about _other_ possible injuries, inquiring “any tearing?” and Clint just shakes his head; he's always done his prep himself.

Clint feels weird, and can’t explain it. He keeps shivering and his skin feels cold. He didn’t expect to feel much besides the usual thrum of adrenaline and pride from a mission well-completed. Whatever he expected to feel, this isn’t it.

Coulson is rubbing some kind of ointment into the bite and looking at him. His hands are warm and firm and something strange rises in his chest, watching Coulson’s efficient fingers on his hips and wrists, testing the boundaries of the bruising. Coulson documents and treats each of the wounds with heartbreaking gentleness. Just as he always has. He has a vague thought that this is the most intimate and vulnerable he’s been with anyone-- perhaps ever. It makes his breath hitch. Coulson seems to hear and gives him an apologetic glance with those clear blue eyes; like he hurt him, and he’s sorry. The thing in his chest gets tighter, and he has to remind himself that breathing is mandatory.

He’d like to explore that train of thought further, but his brain doesn’t seem to be functioning properly. He realizes Coulson is trying to ask him something. He wonders if his aid is still on and operational, even though it worked not fifteen minutes ago.

“What? Sorry, sir, tired.”

Coulson is holding both of his wrists now, kneeling in front of him with a look of concern. He opens his mouth to say something, closes it, collects himself, and then asks, his eyes cast down, “Did you win?”

A broken, weird little laugh escapes his throat, this is all so goddamn strange. “Fifteen-Love, I win, sir,” he says, and shivers.

Couson’s lip quirks up on one side, and he slides his hands down to hold Clint's hands, “You know, to win at tennis, you actually need more than fifteen points.”

“Huh,” Clint says dizzily, trying to make his hands grip back,“Guess I only ever played the sex version, sir. Don’t seem to win much anyway.” He's had to have touched Coulson's hands before, right? He's touched so many many people's hands, and it usually feels nice but-- huh. He feels really really weird.

Coulson's hand slides up his right wrist and Clint realizes he's taking his pulse. Then he's gone, bustling around the room and bringing back a blanket and bottle of electrolyte solution.

"Clint?" And that's so strange, Coulson calls him Agent Barton, even when they're battered and sharing a bed after an op. Even when one or both of them has been stabbed or shot. "Clint, can you stay upright long enough to drink this?"

"Yeah. Thirsty," he mumbles, and struggles to hold the bottle. Coulson is manhandling the blanket around his shoulders. The bottle slips through his fingers and begins staining the carpet bright blue.

"I'm going to call for medevac for you," he says, starting to stride away, but Clint isn’t so far gone he can’t grab Coulson’s wrist, no matter how weakly. He doesn’t understand. He’s having a lot of feelings and he’s so cold.

"Why?" Clint asks blearily. He's been taken from an op in a medical helicopter before, but he'd fallen four stories, that time.

"You're confused, your blood pressure is low, you're shivering, and you didn't fight with me on medical check. You're going into shock," he explains tightly, removing his wrist from Clint's useless grip.

"You can’t take care of me? You always take care of me, sir." And if that's not the craziest, most pathetic, plaintive thing he's ever said, he will eat his bow. He gives himself a mental shove; _shut it, Barton, you idiot,_ "I'm okay,” he mumbles. He must be really tired.

"You might be okay now, but if your blood pressure keeps dropping you most certainly will not be." He strides back with his comm in hand, kneeling again in front of Clint, and putting a hand up to his cheek, like that makes total sense. It feels amazing, but it doesn’t make any damn sense.

"I'm not in shock-- didn't even get shot, sir. Know you don't like it." Clint tries to remember what he knows about going into shock. He’s seen it in the field, but he’s usually too busy ducking medical and trying to retrieve arrows to notice more than the fact that shock victims are usually wrapped in space blankets. “I don’t even have a space blanket,” he tries to explain to Coulson.

Coulson is taking his pulse again, touching his forehead where it's sticky with sweat, "No, I don't like it when my best agent gets shot. And if you're not in shock you're definitely not well." He taps on his comm, "This is Agent Coulson. I need medical assistance in room 232. Who copies?" His voice echoes ethereally in Clint's hearing aid, but no other voice answers.

"Am I really your best agent, sir?" He asks, and wonders at what point he started having an out-of-body experience, because though he might ask that question, he’d never ask it in such a hopeful, childish tone of voice.

Coulson looks up to him with a strained, amused smile, and he's touching Clint's feet now, and are his toes blue or did he just spill that much electrolyte? Both? "Is that even a question?” he says impatiently, “Yes, Barton, you hide your injuries, you don’t understand radio silence and you are a ridiculous sass monster. But, you are my best agent. By far. I’ve never seen you miss a shot, you’re a goddamn acrobat, and your social engineering is terrifying; you just got a highly trained military officer to tell you the grittiest minutiae of his illegal arms dealing.” Clint feels just a hint of that pride he thought he would feel, but then his head lists off to one side, lolling on his neck limply. He wonders why he’s acting like a slumped over newborn, but it doesn’t seem super-important, “Even though now it seems whatever you did with that man is definitely sending you into shock.”

Clint’s mind is still foggy, but it doesn’t stop that damn compulsive honesty Coulson inspires, “I think you like me, sir,” he slurs out.

“I’m sure that I do, Agent Barton,” Coulson says easily, “and to be honest, it’s becoming increasingly problematic.”

Clint quickly redefines his previous definitions of the words _confused, dizzy,_ and _holy shit._ He’s not sure that squeaking noise came from him, but he’s going to pretend it didn’t.

Coulson’s voice entirely as he touches his comm again, "This is Agent Coulson," he says, more insistently, "I need medical assistance in room 232 as soon as possible. Who can copy?"

Clint waits politely for someone to respond, to hear Ericksson or Singh, even though they should be gone with the Commandant on the chopper, or Agent Ells, their pilot, or even someone from the Paris office.

Nothing.

“Huh." He remarks on the silence, then, because he apparently can’t control anything right now, he says, "I like you too, sir. Awesome.” He wants to say more to Coulson, but even those words come out garbled and strained. He's not sure there in the right order or even in English, but It's important that Coulson knows. Knows how excellent he is, how important he is; the man who saved him and taught him how to read and made him an agent. How much Clint unabashedly adores him.

That thought is the first thing that gives Clint a moment of pause. He attempts to look to Coulson, who’ll be there, steady and calm. He’ll make all of this nonsense stop. He's having a lot of feelings and that isn't easy for him on a normal day, much less in the middle of the night after an extra-crazy social engineering op.

But as he moves his head to look, blackness creeps on the edges of his vision, and that is actually scary. Clint has never enjoyed unconsciousness. Bad shit happens to you when you're not in control. “Sir?” He yelps, right before his body jolts in the chair, cramps spasming up his legs and arms. He realizes all at once that the shivering and the coldness and the dizziness and the feeling like he might be passing out are all interrelated. Also, that last part fucking hurt. He is not okay and he has no idea why. “It’s dark, I don’t-- Sir?”

"I need a medical team," he hears Coulson saying, his command voice brooking absolutely no argument, " _now,_ please. Agent Barton is going into shock and losing consciousness. I want a saline drip and an adrenaline injection, _now._ Who copies?!"

"Oh, help," Clint mumbles weakly, even as the room starts to spin and swirl with dark stripes. His body gives another painful spasm that travels all the way down to his toes, “Help, sir.” He feels cold sweat trickle down his temple. He scrabbles for some lucidity, attempts to breathe more deeply, thinks to get his head between his knees, but that only succeeds in pitching him almost head over heels off the chair.

"Okay, okay," Coulson is holding him. He’s sure he weighs almost two hundred pounds, but Coulson lowers him to the floor and sets him down with no effort. He's covering him in blankets and shoving pillows under his feet. He tries to take more measured breaths, but another jolt of pain runs through his muscles, and dammit if he doesn’t have a shitton of muscles.

“Does anybody copy?” Coulson says into his comm again. His fingers are in Clint’s hair, and it’s so nice; soothing. Clint is tempted to just shut his eyes and drift off. It’d be so much easier. His hair is probably a sex-mess. That's embarrassing. Is it weird to be embarrassed in front of someone who just listened to you have sex for four days? Huh.

“Barton, Barton, _Clint,_ you have to stay awake. _Agent._ Stay awake!”

Coulson is panicking. Something is really really wrong. Coulson didn’t panic when he got shot. He wants him to stay awake. Coulson wants him to stay awake. He can do that. He’s pretty sure he can do that.

"Epipen!" Coulson says, like that’s the best word in the English language. Even as the room darkens and spins, Clint hears Coulson clattering through his own luggage. "Someone had better respond, I'm about to give Barton an epinephrine injection. I swear, I will let him use you all as target practice if you don't get someone down here with saline and a stretcher in five minutes or less. _Who. Fucking. Copies."_

 _Coulson said the F word for me,_ Clint thinks giddily.

Then the blanket comes off of his left leg and something hard is pressing on the bare skin of his right quadriceps. There’s a loud click and he feels the unmistakable prick of a needle. Coulson is counting to ten, holding the orange and yellow epipen he keeps with him at all times-- Coulson is allergic to bees. Then Coulson’s hand is on his leg, rubbing the spot where the needle was a moment before.

“m’I ‘lergic?” he asks, his body starting to tingle.

“No, no you’re not. Your heart was stopping, but epinephrine should help. It’s the best I can do. Stay awake, please.”

“Copy,” he mumbles, and feels his sluggish heart begin to pick up the pace. Lazy heart. Coulson covers his leg with the blanket again, tucking it in snugly.

Then, Coulson’s hand darts under the blanket and wraps around Clint’s. His heart is struggling, but feeling Coulson’s firm, confident hand holding his makes it a little better. The whole _how much he adores him_ thing strikes him again, but he’s wracked by another wave of cramps.

Things get hazy for awhile. His heart pounds and falters, his muscles loosen and tighten; his body seems to be warring with itself. Finally he feels more relaxed, like he might be able to sleep, but Coulson gives his hand an insistent squeeze.

“Shit,” Clint says eloquently.

“Yeah,” Coulson returns, “Feeling any better?”

Clint doesn’t know the answer to that question, so he makes a humming noise. That usually works for Coulson. Clint likes to imagine that he can tell what he means by the tones Clint picks. Clint was always good at music when he could hear well enough for it; a lot can be said with an interval. Coulson is rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand.

He begins to be aware of other things now, like the plush carpet under his bare back, the way it feels amazing for his feet to be elevated on a pile of pillows, the ambient lighting from the lamps and screens scattered over the room. It’s centering. The world is still spinning, but the blankets have helped him feel less freezing, and Coulson’s hand is nice too. Coulson’s held him before, held pressure on wounds, held an ice pack on his head, carried him when he broke his foot in a bad fall.

After a few moments, Clint finds that he has use of his hands again.

And Clint Barton has spent his life running and hiding and playing a game, and now there’s an adrenaline drug in his system, and he’s in shock because of reasons apparently, so when he closes his fingers over Coulson’s, working to get their fingers laced together. he tells himself that’s not the most insane thing he’s ever done.

For awhile, nothing else happens, besides the ebbing chaos of his body trying to figure its shit out.

“Hi,” he says, again, with magnificent eloquence, after a long while, after he is pretty sure he’s going to live and has two brain cells to rub together. He turns to face Coulson, carefully not removing his hand from the other man’s.

Coulson is fiddling with his comm with his other hand, a deep frown creasing his brow.

“I,” Coulson stutters, and Clint’s blood turns to ice. Coulson does not stutter.

“Sir?” and his voice is tentative.

“I owe you an apology,” he says in a traumatized voice, and holds up the comm. It takes a moment for Clint to see the numbers on the channel.

A moment longer to realize the comm is on their private channel.

And a further moment to realize that Coulson was screaming for help-- to him. For him. Over their private line. Now Clint is trying to push himself up, because whatever just happened to him, Coulson’s gotta be worse off. Someone drugged him, someone shot him, he’s sick-- Coulson doesn’t panic, Coulson certainly doesn’t mess up what channel he’s on.

“Lay back down, God, Barton, fuck, really. I nearly killed you.”

And no, looking at Coulson, his pupils are focused and fine, he’s not sweating, there’s no obvious bleeding-- he’s been in this command room for the past four days. He’s-- fine. It’s difficult, but not impossible to reconcile the fact that Coulson made a mistake, but it’s happened before. Despite what the baby agents say, he’s not a robot. He’s just a perfectionist.

“I think I nearly killed me,” Clint points out helpfully, slowly wriggling his body, taking stock of its recovery, “Or, my body decided to spontaneously give up. You gave me the same treatment medical would have-- they’ll reimburse you for the epipen.” There’s a pause as they stare at one another, ”You’re going to make me go to medical about that, aren’t you?”

“No,” Coulson bites out, furious, his blue eyes blazingly fierce, “I’m going to make you go to psych, and assign you a new handler.”

“No,” is all Clint can say to that bullshit. He doesn't bother punctuating it with a 'sir.' "No," he says again, with the enthusiasm of a toddler, and tries valiantly to escape the cocoon in which Coulson has entrapped him, but Coulson is having none of it, pinning him to the floor with two heavy hands on his shoulders.

“No. Whatever the hell this is,” he rips at the air, gesturing violently between the two of them, “it is not good for us.”

“What?! _What?!”_

“You went into _psychogenic shock,_ Agent Barton,” he says in his iciest voice, “Either you realized sex is not just a game after we made you go into a goddamn honeypot op, or worse, the op in combination with actually being cared for in the aftermath of something that rough by someone you--” his voice chokes off, “someone who-- cares for you, startled you so badly that your body tried to turn itself off.”

Clint hadn’t gotten that far in his own self-examination, but he’s fairly sure he wouldn’t have made it to that point for at least a few months. It doesn’t take him long to accept that his sex psychology is probably irrevocably fucked up. The folks in psych probably can’t do much about it, but they won’t hurt him, and they’re nice. But the other half-- a new handler? Hilarious.

“I’ll go to psych,” he says, trying to sound calm and collected. Of course, he’s mostly naked on a hotel room floor with his heart still thrumming from an adrenaline shot, so he’s not sure how it turns out. He steels himself and breathes deeply, locking eyes with Coulson, “I will go to psych. I will _not_ take another handler, sir.”

“That’s not your call, Agent Barton.”

“I think you’ll find that it is, sir.”

"I tried to call for a medevac on our private line."

"And I am just fine, because you thought on your feet and got me a shot and now I'm jittery but fine. I might have just _fainted,_ how many people have we seen go into shock? They’re all still alive--”

"That's not the point--"

"Pretty sure it is, sir--"

"The point," Coulson growled, in a tone Clint had actually never heard before, all terror and rage and raw scraping emotion, "is that I was compromised. I was compromised by seeing you hurt, and it caused a mistake. It was not a random mistake. It was a mistake I made because I was compromised." He breathed deeply and exhaled the next words, "I almost let you die. I almost let you die because I switched us back to our private line, to reassure you, to make sure you wouldn't rabbit. And then, when you started showing signs of shock, I didn't think to check, I just yelled. I didn't look at my comm, because _I was looking at you."_

There’s a long moment where Clint fuzzily considers what this means. His heart is slowing now and a desperate exhaustion has begun creeping through his bones. Coulson’s admission of-- compromisation (he decides that is definitely a word) should surprise him but really doesn’t. It just sort of flits through his mind until it settles in a place that makes sense, right next to the five years of pining and admiration Clint’s been saving up.

Also, he’s not Hawkeye for nothing. He’s not super-bright sometimes, but he does _see._ Coulson has taken the puzzle of their relationship and shaken it until it’s fallen into a picture that makes sense. Shitty metaphor, but hey, he’s coming back from a near-death experience and shitty metaphors are kind of his thing. He can have a pass on this one.

He carefully reaches out of his blanket cocoon and catches Coulson’s hand again.

“To be fair,” he says, “I’ve been looking at you, too, sir, and we’ve been... _compromised,_ for awhile. Pretty sure this was just a random mistake.”

Coulson’s mouth falls open.

“What,” Clint says sleepily, giving him a lazy smile, “You didn’t think I’d notice?” and maybe he’s being a little cocky, now that all of the pieces he’s picked up over the last five years finally form a picture, “‘Sokay, sir. We’re a little busy for romance, maybe you’re not cool with the whole power imbalance thing, maybe you’re not actually into menfolk,” He looks up to Coulson, who’s making a variety of pained faces. “Or you know,” he continues, breaking eye contact and beginning a third attempt at escaping the blanket pile, “I’m not much to bring back to Connecticut with my whole dyslexic/half-deaf/ex-carny/assassin thing. Got no pedigree.”

“Stop that,” Coulson bites out, “Don’t talk about yourself that way. I could never be ashamed of you."

“Mmm,” he murmurs, “Ditto, sir. I’m okay. The epipen was a good save. I’m gonna be okay. Call it a wash, sir. Really.”

Coulson is quiet, but his fingers are still laced with his, his eyes are wide and disbelieving.

“When’s extraction, sir?” Clint asks after several long moments.

“1400 tomorrow,” he responds, looking around the room, as though realizing they’re still on an op.

“Am I cleared to sleep, sir? I think I really want some sleep, and I bet you do too.”

Coulson closes his eyes briefly, rubbing his thumb idly over the back of Clint’s hand again. He takes this as a good sign and responds in kind. Coulson reaches out with his other hand and takes his pulse again. He gives his hand a little tug, and helps Clint to his feet, steadies him when he sways just briefly. Darkness swims again at the edges of Clint's vision, but it clears itself after a second. Coulson leads him the few steps to the bed, and deposits him there.

Clint watches as he takes stock of their perimeter, sets the alarms, turns off some of the screens, and strips down to his undershirt and boxers. He’s seen this sight before on many missions, but it’s different today. Raw, important. _Intimate._ He knows he should have thoughts or feelings about that, but he’s exhausted and sore and can’t think about much but how pleasant the sheets feel compared to the floor and how much his head loves this pillow. He might steal it.

He’s still thinking of ways to get Coulson to let him steal the pillow when he climbs into bed. He realizes what he wants more than this pillow is for Coulson to be closer to him.

“Sir?” he starts, far beyond any embarrassment.

“Phil,” Coulson responds, wrapping one arm underneath him and one arm around.

Clint blinks, confused for a moment, acclimating himself to being enveloped in those warm, protective arms. He always knows exactly what Clint needs. He marvels at the replacement of his magical pillow with something so much better, “Phil?”

“Well, my name isn’t actually _sir,_ ” he can feel just a brief thrum of a laugh in the other man’s chest.

Clint takes a moment to think about that, then nuzzles his head into his shoulder.

“Phil,” he says, “Good,” and punctuates that with another determined little nuzzle.

“So we’re compromised, huh?” Phil says.

“Can’t say that I mind it... Phil.”

“You know we have to talk about this,” he says somewhat noncommittally.

“Sleep now, talk later?” Clint suggests.

“Sleep now, talk later,” he confirms.

The last thought that flickers through Clint’s mind before he gives in to sleep is that maybe, just maybe, he could handle this not being a game.

**Author's Note:**

> Psychogenic shock is a thing-- but I know very little about it, and WebMD can only teach me so much. People who go into shock do sometimes need adrenaline injections, and that's what an epipen is, so-- I just sort of science'd that out myself and pretended the aftermath would be similar to what happens when you use your epipen. So, sincerest apologies for my obvious disregard of-- you know-- human anatomy :)


End file.
